Gift from the Gods
by Hanzatsu-Hime
Summary: [1580 Japan - AU] After a difficult year under Arlong's control of her restaurant, Nami's only goal for Christmas Eve is to enjoy a tasty meal alone while watching the fireworks from her bedroom. But on her way back from the public bath, she encounters a man unconscious in the snow! What will she do with him? (A Secret Santa gift for the event hosted by ZoNamiEvents)


_**Gift from the** Gods_

* * *

**Rating:** T/14A  
**Universe:** 1580 A.D. Japan (AU)  
**Pairing:** Roronoa Zoro x Nami  
**Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own any of the characters in this story.  
**Note:** This is a belated Secret Santa gift for itsthemooface on tumblr! Please enjoy!

* * *

The warmth from the bathhouse waters remained in her bones as Nami walked along the snowy street back home, allowing her to enjoy the many gentle snowflakes that fell overhead. Being able to bask in her favorite Christmas tradition was something she feared she might not have been able to do under the supervision of her new manager, but to her surprise, she was able to celebrate the holiday on a high note by taking advantage of the public bath when she knew it'd be empty and savoring the nice, warm soak. Everyone else in the town had family and friends to eat plentiful meals with, to drink and laugh with before the firework display began, which gave her the rare opportunity to stroll through the streets completely alone.

It comforted her to finally be free of the wants of customers, the demands of her boss or the cruel leers of her coworkers. The drastic change in atmosphere was immediate after Sanji had left to pursue his dreams of opening his own restaurant and she had been forced to sell her place. After a steady decline of customers that had nearly caused her to close her doors, a man named Arlong had arrived on her doorstep and asked her if she wanted to keep her business alive. If only someone had warned her about the twisted way in which he did business, she might have been able to avoid having her restaurant turned into a den for local criminals.

Was it really still her business? No.

Arlong had tricked her into a debt she could never repay so that he could claim her once reputable restaurant and turn it into his personal playground.

Everything was still hers in name but she had never felt more controlled, more suffocated in all of her life.

A deep sigh of disappointment displayed her breath in the cold night air, gaining Nami's attention as it dematerialized right before her eyes. For a single moment, she found herself envious of the way it could so easily disappear. She found herself jealous of the crunch of her shoes in the snow as well, how the sound of each step always returned to silence. The thought made her pause. Alone in the middle of the road, Nami realized that everything about her could vanish – her breath, the sounds she made, the warmth in her bones from the bath – but her physical existence always remained. If she could somehow melt away, all of her problems would too. If only she could turn invisible and escape…

But then her mother's legacy would be left in the hands of a villain like Arlong, and she couldn't let that happen.

No matter how painful her days were, how desperate she was to flee, it would hurt her even more to willingly leave Belle-Mere's pride and joy to someone as horrible as him.

Rediscovering her willpower once again, Nami lifted her head and gazed at the moon in the sky. Peeking through the clouds, it released a light glow that managed to reach her through the heavy grey clouds. A visual representation of herself, she thought: it wasn't like her to allow herself to submit to the weight of her problems, and she certainly wouldn't let Arlong do her in. Even without a clear end in sight, she had to keep pushing forward. She had to—

"Ah!" She screamed when a loud _thud_ was heard in the dark alley next to her. Between a set of homes, Nami found herself startled by the heavy sound, as the darkness of the night made it hard to make it out the cause. Instinctively, her hand flew to the fold of her kimono over her heart so she could grab hold of the dagger she hid in there for protection. But as her eyes scrolled down towards the ground, she noticed a pale fist laying in the snow upon the road.

Someone had collapsed in the alley, there was no doubt. Nevertheless, Nami couldn't risk her own safety – in the middle of the night, on a celebratory holiday where drinking lots of alcohol was encouraged – so she called out to the person to see if they were all right. "Hello? Are you… okay?"

No response was given.

"Excuse me, are you all right over there?" She tried again, but didn't dare approach.

Again, she was met with silence.

"…Do you need me to call for a doctor or something? Because I'd like to go home at some point." Nami muttered to herself, her level of annoyance growing along with her level of fear.

Finally, a grunt escaped the person keeled over in the alley. Based off of the deep tone she heard in that single noise, Nami assumed rather quickly that it was a man lying in the snow. He could be intoxicated, which meant she absolutely was not going near him. In fact, she nearly began to speedily walk away until she heard him use words to respond to her, "No doctor."

The pain in his voice reached her somehow in the middle of the road and Nami cursed him internally. She would be a truly horrible person to leave someone who was possibly injured or sick to die in an alleyway, on such a festive night, no less. Clutching the hilt of her dagger in her hand, she dared herself to approach the man with great reservation. "Are you hurt?"

Again, he merely grunted at her.

Nami allowed her frustration with the mysterious man take her over while she stepped into the alley to see him properly. To her surprise, he was lying face down in the snow, with his overcoat completely open and resting disheveled around him. "Are you sick? You can't be laying like this because you're healthy."  
"No, I…" She didn't give him a chance to answer as she roughly pushed his body over onto his back and took a good look at him. Immediately, his summer-style yukata shocked her. There was no conceivable way he was warm enough with such thin clothing on, especially when he wore the upper part open so carelessly. The warmest part of his outfit was his haramaki, which held onto a frightening amount of swords that she hadn't expected to see. However, the truly shocking part of his appearance was somehow his hair color.

Until she noticed the scar over his eye, that is.

"You what?" She demanded.

"I…" – he coughed while fighting to open his lone good eye to look at her – "got lost."

"Where, in the south?" She mocked him. In fact, she was so disappointed in the way this supposed _ronin_ took care of himself that she put her hands on her hips before she began chastising him. "You can't possibly think it's okay to wander around in the winter like this! No wonder you collapsed in the snow. You _could_ actually need to see a doctor, you know-"

His large hand slapped down on her knee, scaring her until she ceased talking. With the driest cough she ever heard, the stranger barked, "No. doctor!"

"All right!" Nami shouted back. Her nerves felt fried due to the bizarre nature of their encounter and she had had enough of his cryptic, helpless behavior—

"Wait," she said, eyes wide. Nami leaned forward and pinned the man to the ground with her hand on his chest. In his weakened condition, she managed to hold him there. In any other situation, she knew based off of the feeling of his exposed muscles that she wouldn't be so lucky. Taking advantage of his circumstances, she questioned him intensely, "Are you here for Arlong?"

The amount of criminals that began flocking to the town after he took control of her restuarant was terrible. It had dawned on her then that he could have been an associate of her boss and, should she let this man die in the gutter, Arlong might suffer in some way. It was a horrible thought, she knew, but Nami couldn't possibly help a man who somehow benefited Arlong. She couldn't.

To her surprise, the stranger beneath her wheezed and barked at her again with his favorite word, "No!"

After a sigh of relief, she decided that she had no reason not to help him.

* * *

Nami was much more careful sliding open her bedroom door by the time she returned with their dinner. The restaurant was alive with Arlong's comrades laughing at some nefarious scheme, pounding their fists against the tables and drinking until all of their inhibitions melted away. It had been quite the undertaking to sneak a strange man into her private quarters undetected by the growing crowd of thieves and pillagers, however, it was even more dangerous for her to sneak some extra food off to her room for both herself and her special guest.

Crumpled on the floor where she had left him, the green-haired man hadn't moved an inch since she had last seen him. She had even drawn her futon's blankets back for him to crawl into but he had passed out with his backside in the air very much so like a child. Nami couldn't decide whether she was amused or oddly disappointed. Uncertain, she decided to bring the tray of food over to the middle of the room and await for him to awaken. Her stomach growled eagerly at the Christmas feast and she couldn't possibly let it get cold while the stranger slept soundly.

With an empty belly that craved the entrée of her meal, Nami was prepared to finish her side dishes quickly. She pulled the cloth napkin off of her shoulder and laid it on her lap once she had taken her seat in a relaxed position, with her legs resting off to her left carelessly. It didn't escape her notice how improper it was to have a random man in her bedroom at such a late hour – on a festive day, no less – but that did not motivate her to pay him any special courtesy. No, she didn't have to sit like a lady or eat her dinner like a lady or drink her secret bottle of _sake_ like a lady just because there was some stranger in her room.

She owed him nothing, and he owed her the world for saving his life from the winter's life-threatening frigidity. If he didn't awaken and immediately place his head on the floor as a sign of gratitude, then truly it was him who was improper.

"What's that?" Was the groggy whisper the man released at the exact moment her soup bowl clinked against the serving tray.

His voice made her jump. "Dinner!" She explained with an edge of irritation to her voice brought on by how startled she was.

With the window behind him and the candle she had lit dying out to her right, Nami watched the _ronin_ lift his collapsed body into a proper seat as if he were a lifeless puppet being forced to straighten himself out due to some invisible strings. Having supported his body weight all the way home on her own, she couldn't believe that a man so heavy could carry himself with such grace. Despite the indent of her _tatami _mats on his cheek, he looked almost proper while he waited to be served.

Surprised, Nami wondered aloud, "Aren't you at all curious as to where you are?"

He grumbled with a knitted brow, "I'm not lying in the snow anymore. That's all that matters."

"But you don't know who I am, or what I could do to you." She pointed out as she passed him a steaming bowl of soup.

The stranger bowed his head, accepted the bowl and took a long sip before continuing the conversation. It gave her the chance to enjoy some _miso_ soup herself while their discussion was paused. Finally, when he was finished drinking the broth in own huge gulp, the man said plainly, "That's fine."

The cockiness he possessed was unbelievable. Smiling, Nami lowered her bowl and bluntly stated, "You probably _should_ see a doctor; the cold might have damaged the part of your brain responsible for your common sense."

"You didn't call for one, did you?" His panic seized the entire room, once again alarming her.

"No," she answered him swiftly so she could move on to her next question for him. "Why don't you want to see one? You were passed out in the snow while wearing clothes meant for the summer time! Do you realize how dangerous that is?"

While handing her his empty soup bowl, the man explained easily enough, "I don't have the money to afford one."

"Oh?"

"And I don't need one, anyway. None of my limbs changed color, right?" It sounded as though he was trying to prove a point to her, yet once his question left his lips, his attitude melted away while he examined the very limbs he had just mentioned to make sure he was correct.

As Nami watched him fling himself around on the floor, she couldn't help but fixate on a rather important detail: he didn't have enough money to seek medical help. She had assumed he was a disgraced _samurai_ on the hunt for jobs, like those soulless mercenaries that frequented her restaurant from time to time. But his lack of funds implied to her that he wasn't a very good _samurai_ if she was correct in assuming he was a _ronin_.

'_If he has three swords, you'd think he had talent using at least one of them_.' She thought bleakly.

As if he could read her mind, the stranger patted his hip rather roughly a handful of times before looking over his shoulder and spotting his swords resting on the floor. Nami watched him sigh with relief, noticing how his shoulders sank while he let such a heavy breath go, and she couldn't help but relate to that sentiment. They appeared to mean a great deal to him, just like her mother's restaurant. She watched him lift them off of the _tatami_ mats and return them to their place upon his left hip, where his left hand stayed while the right floated in the air and awaited his next dish.

His sentimental attachment to his trio of blades managed to impress her in a way she couldn't really articulate.

Impatient in his seat, the stranger seemed to remember that he owed her his gratitude and said, "Thanks for the meal, by the way."

Nami couldn't help but chuckle, if only once. "You're welcome," She answered him coyly while handing him a small plate of vegetables. There was a pair of chopsticks to go with them, but by the time she presented them to him, he had supposedly found his fingers to be a perfect substitute for them and began to devour every single morsel. She decided it was fair to ask him then, "How long has it been since you've last eaten?"

The sound of a cup crashing against the wall of the restaurant shattered their concentration on their conversation. It wasn't until the men in the room down the hall laughed loud enough to cause her bedroom walls to shake did the green-haired man feel like responding to her. Nami noticed the way his one good eye sharpened as well as he observed her doorway cautiously when he did finally reply, "How far are the Ryukyu Islands from here?"

Nami nearly choked on her radish slice. "The Ryukyu Islands!?"

"Yeah," was his slowly executed reply.

"They're to the far south!" Nami explained, exasperated by the traveling swordsman's horrible sense of direction. It almost panicked her to think that a grown man was wandering around the country side without any awareness of what direction he was traveling in the he would be headed towards the ocean and somehow end up in the middle of the country instead.

The baffled _samurai_ put his empty plate down in between them and placed his hands on his knees with a heavy slap. "Far south?" He repeated. "Then where the hell are we!?"

"You're in Iyo! You're closer to the capital than you are to the southern islands!"

"To… Kyoto?"

"Yes!"

"Huh," hummed the calmest man in the world. Nami gawked at him, forgetting about the food in her hand, wondering how he had survived as long as he did.

As a woman who dreamed of running away from her restaurant, from the town she grew up in, from everything that kept her shackled to one spot, she would give anything to have the _ronin_'s freedom. In some ways, he exercised his freedom justly by being able to casually stroll around Japan without even being aware of the prefecture he was in for what was most likely days on end. His muscular stature must have been the result of all of that walking he did from place to place, getting lost, and having to turn himself around! What she wouldn't give to live a life like that.

Though she knew it might upset her further, Nami dared herself to ask, "Do you live somewhere in the Ryukyu Islands then?"

"In a way," admitted the stranger. "I used to live in the north, but after traveling around the countryside for work, I've been living with a friend in Nagasaki for a while now."

"So you" – she was nearly ready to hiss like a hot kettle of tea over a fire – "were traveling from Nagasaki to the Ryukyu Islands? And you ended up here, in Iyo?"

"Apparently," He shrugged, forced to agree with her since he didn't seem to care about his current whereabouts in the slightest.

Furious with him now, Nami threw her plate on the ground and stomped her way over to her dresser. In an almost blinding rage, she yanked a scroll from her bottom drawer and returned to her seat in a matter of moments. She laid down the scroll and let it roll open until she revealed to the clueless _ronin_ a map of the country. It was rough and most likely misshapen but it would help paint a picture of his stupidity. To help illustrate the points she would be making, she scooped out a few grains of rice from her bowl of _gyudon_ and prepared a small demonstration.

"Each grain represents a day of traveling, all right?" Nami clarified quickly. Then, she laid them down between the points of where she knew the places he mentioned would be.

Part of her knew she was taking this too far, but how often did she find an excuse to use one of her maps?

"Okay, this starting point? The spot that has both trails of rice connected to it? That's Nagasaki. That's the place you started from." Nami began. She paused to look at the stranger in the hopes that he'd confirm what he had told her to make sure she understood his story correctly.

When he nodded, she jumped into the rest of her presentation.

"The line heading downwards towards you is the path that you would have needed to take to the Ryukyu Islands. If you had traveled there directly, it would have taken you about nine or ten days. But instead of going south, you went east. So you've spent… the last eight or so days heading in this direction instead. That means that if you were to go from here to the Ryukyu Islands, you're looking at a two week journey."

He was processing the information she provided him with carefully, taking his time. At least, she assumed that was why he was silent for a handful of seconds. Since he was digesting her words, she thought it would make sense that he digest the rest of his meal as well and handed him his awaiting bowl of _gyudon_. Silently, he took both his dinner and the pair of chopsticks from her without taking his eyes off of her map. It made her embarrassed for some reason. After all, it was a map she had drawn based on the travels she'd heard about from her customers…and Arlong's associates.

It wasn't perfect, but it was still hers.

"I better leave first thing in the morning," Was the conclusion the stranger arrived at. Nami could only scoff. She reached for her own dinner and took a huge bite of beef, all while she felt him scowling at her. He stubbornly barked, "What?"

"You'll never make it," She predicted. "Not only is travel going to be stalled around the country right now due to the Christmas celebrations, you couldn't even walk in the right direction in the first place. I know some people have terrible senses of direction, but yours is actually scary."

"Tch," the grown man began to sulk. "I was supposed to make it there by Christmas day." Disappointed in his situation, Nami watched as the wayward _ronin_ inhaled his bowl of _gyudon_ angrily. While he furiously ate his meal, it gave her a chance to truly mull over her own situation.

There was a swordsman of some kind of caliber sitting in her bedroom, devouring her food in secret because she couldn't sit in her own restaurant without being interrogated or turned away. She knew nothing about this green-haired stranger but she did know that she was safer with him behind closed doors than she was with the loan shark and his comrades. Not only was she spending the night before Christmas with him, but in a way, it was almost cruel that the gods would force her to help someone who had all the freedom she craved while having the complete lack of directional sense to take advantage of it. It was a cruel joke they'd played on her while she was quite possibly a Christmas blessing for him…

Or maybe…

She could turn him into a blessing of her own.

Maybe he _was_ a gift from the gods, if she played her cards right.

If she planned her next few words very, very carefully.

"You know, I can make sure you get to the Ryukyu Islands." She promised, lying.

He didn't know that though. The way his lone eye grew wide demonstrated just how excited he was by her offer. "Really?"

"Yes," she said through her teeth. A deep breath weighed down her lungs but it was almost like she couldn't dare breathe until her scheme actually worked out how she wanted it to. "That way, you wouldn't have to worry about getting lost again."

He didn't acknowledge her insult, only her deceitful kindness. While she stacked their empty bowls on the serving tray, he finally expressed a fair amount of thankfulness towards her, and it was because of something she was only offering. "That would be great, thank you…?"

He was looking for her name and she refused to give it. Not yet. Not until their deal was finalized. Nami decided that it was proper of her to sit upon her knees now, facing him over the width of her messy futon. Hands together over her knees, she explained, "But I'd need you to do something for me first."

The mention of a bargain made his back straighten. Despite his impaired vision, the intensity he sized her up with was powerful enough to make her feel smaller. The version of him that sat before her now made her hope that he was as impressive as his aura was. "What's that?" He asked firmly.

"I need you to act as my body guard until you leave." Proclaimed Nami.

The brow over his scarred eye was the one that shot up high in confusion. "Your body guard? Aren't you just a waitress?"

Her pride burned in the depths of her belly. All she wanted to do was blurt out the truth and demand his respect! However, she realized that it might do her well for him to believe that she was a pitiful waitress rather than a business owner. After all, in some ways, she was nothing more than a waitress now and that was the real problem. She had to take Belle-Mere's place back from Arlong and she wasn't going to do it on her own. If she had a samurai on her payroll, he could protect her while she dug into the loan shark's affairs in order to discover his weakness.

Once Arlong had his thugs had been evicted, she'd send him on his way.

Even if she thought this plan of hers was impossible, she had to try. "I am, but there are a lot of dangerous guys here that make me feel unsafe. You can stay here the entire time without having to spend a single _mon_. If you can protect me until the holiday rush of customers ends, I'll step away from the restaurant and take you to the docks and put you on a boat to the Ryukyu Islands myself."

"And come back home on your own?" He questioned her sanity with that tone of his.

Bravely, Nami nodded. "And I'll come back home on my own."

"Well," sighing, deflating, the stranger dropped the tension in his body which signaled to her that he was no longer on edge over their deal-making. "I can't really say no to you, can I?"

"You'd be a pretty bad _ronin_ if you turned down free room and board so easily." Nami pointed out nonchalantly, acting like his conscious despite having none of her own to speak of.

Her superiority earned her a hard glare. Then, it earned her a hand to shake. The stranger held his out to her and this time, he wasn't looking for food. Instead, he introduced himself, "I'm Roronoa Zoro. Just Zoro is fine."

Grinning from ear to ear as if she had won some kind of prize, Nami snatched up his hand in hers and shook it enthusiastically. Then, she answered, "I'm Nami. I look forward to working with you, Zoro-_san_."

_That_ was at least entirely true.

As their hands came down on their last shake, the walls of her room shook again. This time, the tremor was heavier and much louder than something a mere cup could have caused. The familiar sound of multiple dishes breaking no longer made her jump, but a certain someone's voice that boomed throughout the building definitely did. "_Ah, dammit! You idiots keep messing this place up! NAMI!_"

"Who's that?" Zoro asked immediately. Nami hadn't noticed the moment when his hand had slipped away, but it surprised her to discover that it was gripping the sheath of one of his swords with the thumb slowly pushing against the guard until she could see the cool steel of the blade.

Groaning as she rose onto her feet, Nami explained, "That's one of the people I need your protection from." Was there fearfulness in her voice? She couldn't tell. All she knew was that she had to hide the tray of food she stole and somehow sneak the both of them out of her room before Arlong stormed in!

"Is he the owner?"

The question made her grit her teeth. Nami lifted herself up while holding the serving tray and faced him with frustration surely visible in every line of her face. "Ask me about it when we're someplace else! We have to go before he sees us!"

Zoro listened immediately, however, not without angrily whispering back at her. "Where are we going!? Didn't you just make a deal with me to protect you so you can be safer here? I'll take him on if he tries to do anything to you."

Pushing passed him, Nami walked over to the _shouji_ door that would lead them outside, every step she took emphasized by the stomping of Arlong's massive feet as he started to head towards her bedroom. A blast of cold winter air smacked her in the face the moment she stepped outside but her focus was dedicated to hiding the tray under the _engawa_ as she snuck across it. She knew from many past experiences with this trick that the porch was tall enough to hide everything snuggly underneath it. With precision, she forced it through the thick pile of snow that wrapped around the building and then flattened it all out to appear as if she hadn't tampered with it in the first place.

"_NAMI! Are you back yet!?_"

She threw her head up to look at Zoro, who had intelligently closed the _shouji_ behind him when he stepped outside after her. His presence – which was supposed to give her more confidence in the face of Arlong – made her decision-making crumble when she realized she'd have to hide two people instead of just herself. Tossing her head back and forth, she knew that there was no where they could run on the grounds that the loan shark or his goons wouldn't eventually find them! They'd have to sneak out into town, and quick! Otherwise, who knows what he'd do-  
"_You better not be ignoring me!_"

"Come here," Zoro ordered with the kind of certainty she wish she possessed. He waved at her to return onto the _engawa_ just as he leapt into the air suddenly. Nami moved as he commanded while watching him with genuine amazement behind her eyes. He landed on the roof so smoothly that she hadn't even heard him as he stepped into the snow blanketing the roof tiles. Sadly, her awe was demolished when her bedroom door slammed open. With her dying candle sitting next to her bed still flickering away in there, she could roughly make out the outline of her hated boss as he entered her room, despite her setting the strict ground rules that he swore to, promising that her personal space was all her own and never to be invaded.

She didn't have the time to be mad about that now, though. Nami was just trying to restart her heart. If Arlong caught her outside and it appeared like she was trying to hide from him, the rest of her night would involve her waitressing until his drunken customers were all passed out and having them ridicule every single facet of her life while she stood there and bared it. She couldn't go through with that, not today of all days…!

"Come on!" Whispered the man on her roof. Nami stared up at Zoro only to find his hand hanging over her head. With both of her hands did she grab onto him desperately. In his grasp, he made her feel as light as a feather while he tugged her entire being up onto the roof effortlessly. She even landed in his lap and, despite the snow that easily began to soak through her _kimono_, the proximity to the strange _ronin_ didn't bother her.

Even as he embraced her, keeping her locked up in his hold, she couldn't find a problem with his possessiveness.

Not when she was seated in his arms at the exact moment that the _shouji_ door below them was thrown open with a great big huff. Like frozen statues on the roof of her restaurant, they sat in silence. Arlong wasn't at all subtle as he stomped onto the porch in an obviously foul mood. It almost sounded like he was sniffing at the air in order to find something but Nami couldn't even begin to comprehend how incredibly creepy that would be. Instead, she buried her head in Zoro's chest, only blushing slightly when she remembered how exposed he was with his partially open _yukata_.

He must have been freezing, and yet, all she could focus on was the scent of his body. He needed a bath, there was no doubt about that. Nevertheless, she sort of…liked the way he smelt of steel and nature. The coldness from being found in the snow must not have entirely left him because she caught a distinct whiff of the winter winds on him, contrasting with the natural warmth his entire being seemed to possess. It calmed her somewhat.

Or perhaps she just hadn't been hugged by another human in so long that she was finding herself immediately attached to Roronoa Zoro while he held her tight up on her roof as they tried to hide from Arlong.

"_Hmph_," she heard her boss grunt with disappointment. "_How long's it take to take a damn bath?_" Was what he mumbled to himself before closing the door leading from her bedroom to the porch, implying that he was back inside and off of their trail. The stark contrast in the air that occurred when he vacated the porch was enough to make her sink into Zoro's arm, overcome with relief—

But she didn't. Instead, Nami recoiled and looked up at him wide eyed. "That was a really good decision."

Zoro smirked down at her and tossed his head to one side, admitting, "It was just the most obvious place to hide. I had to drag you up here or we'd have had a fight on our hands."

"Well you'll definitely earn your keep if you can think quickly on your feet like that all the time," Nami praised him openly as she inhaled a deep, deep breath. Fixing her bangs, she added. "I just wish we had had the chance to grab the _sake_ before he chased us out of the—"

Slowly, like her stash was somehow meant to be a surprise for her, Zoro revealed that he had in fact swiped the _sake_ bottle she'd had in her room by stuffing it into that incredibly wide and evidently durable _haramaki_ of his. "This one?" He tried to appear uncertain but that cockiness she'd realized was a defining trait of his thwarted any attempt he had made at acting suave.

"Cups?" inquired Nami.

"Who needs cups?" answered Zoro. Nami gawked at him now, unbothered by the snow that was making her cold when she was face to face with such lunacy! But before she could argue in favor of going back in to get the cups, she was forced to watch him take a rather long swig of the _sake_ right in front of her face. Then, once he was finished, he handed it to her.

"Are you serious?" She was prepared to scold him.

However, Zoro pointed out, "We can seal our deal by sharing a drink. The spit will make it more meaningful, right?"

"Ew!" Nami arched her back as she squealed, trying to escape the notion that they were binding themselves together through _sake_ and saliva. She was more than prepared to berate him for such a disgusting suggestion, considering she was dealing with a man who hadn't been to a doctor in who knew how long!

But then, a loud crackle ripped through the sky behind her. A red gentle hue flickered over Zoro's body wherever her shadow wasn't, alerting her to the arrival of the Christmas Day fireworks display. It was officially midnight and the town was setting off their celebratory fireworks to commemorate the holiday. Turning around in his lap, Nami looked up at the grey clouds in the sky and watched with belated joy as different colors exploded high over the town, fighting off the dreariness of the falling snow to light up the Christmas night. It signaled to her that for a short while, the town she had lived in her entire life was calm, happy even all at once.

She waited for such a simple moment all year long because it meant that she could be carefree, if only for a little while.

"All right," Nami caved to his horrible proposition and snatched the _sake_ bottle away from him, turning around in his lap so she could view the fireworks properly. "We'll share this while we watch the fireworks and then we can head to bed."

"I'm sitting in snow, you know," Zoro said, exasperated. "We can just as easily go back to your room and watch them!"

"Hush," was her final word on the matter before bringing the bottle to her lips and tipping it high in the air. Only lukewarm now, it still managed to create a comforting sensation as she drank quite a bit of the remaining liquor. Then, she passed it back to him. Zoro retrieved the small bottle from her just as there was a burst of four fireworks back to back. The sound, the colors and the bliss managed to melt away any and all tension she was still carrying inside of her, and the _sake_ kept her warm. It was truly a perfect way to end off a rather chaotic night.

And with Zoro now in her employ, it could very well mean that the gods have gifted her his aid so that the freedom she longed for was finally in sight.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Japan started celebrating Christmas in 1549, so this story takes place about thirty years after so that certain traditions are already set in place, and a twenty year-old Nami would have grown up with them her entire life.

This universe is loosely based on those Feudal Japan filler episodes, while also being somewhat inspired by the current Wano Arc. I did a ton of research to make this as accurate as possible, and I hope it shows!

But most importantly, I hope you enjoy your Christmas gift, itsthemooface! Who knows? This might be a gift that turns into a series!

Hope 2020 is treating you all well! And make sure to check out ZoNamiEvents on tumblr to see how you can participate in our upcoming events!


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